We purchased our all electric 2,240 sq. ft. manufactured home in 1990. It was custom built with many nice features and amenities. However, we quickly discovered that more construction detail should have been paid to inner working mechanicals and engineering rather than aesthetics. My biggest wish if I could do it all over would have been to build with 6 inch walls. Even though additional insulation was added to the walls to increase the R value, the bigger wall gap would make a world of difference. I always knew that if I could get a nice home on plenty of land (we own 5 acres), I would never want to move. However, the dilemma became after we retire, how we could afford to live in the home with constantly rising energy costs while on a fixed retirement budget. (We are still 7-8 years away from retirement)
Being a former Entergy employee, we were always informed of company recommendations for energy efficiency. Naturally, I started evaluating our home for efficiency and found many startling observances.
After a year or 2 in the home, we realized the air conditioning could not maintain a comfortable level in the home. A cable contractor working under the home noticed an excessive amount of cold air under the home. Upon further review, I realized that the manufacturer misjudged the position in the floor where the main heat and air duct would be located under the air handler and had attempted to cover up the error cutout. The materials he used fell apart, thus allowing the majority of our heat and air to go outside the home.
When that was corrected as best as possible, I started delving into other energy wasting aspects of the home. Over the course of the next few years, I made numerous energy efficient home improvements including:
- Replaced aluminum windows with low e double pane vinyl windows
- Replaced bubble style plastic skylights with low e double pane metal and wood skylights
- Replaced aluminum patio door with low e double pane vinyl patio door
- Replaced front storm door with energy efficient combo steel door
- Replaced back storm door with energy efficient combo steel door
- Modified under the house restrictive ductwork with smooth, non-restrictive ductwork
- Sealed entire home ductwork with Jett Seal plastic sealant
- Tinted double pane vinyl windows with solar tinting film
- Remodeled new skylights to eliminate air loss inside home due to improper size and fit
As you can see, I am not shy about expensing funds wherever necessary to make the home more energy efficient. I still plan a few more small modifications such as outlet insulation and fireplace flue insulating plug.
I saw an ad for Energy Roofs and Walls back in 2005. Bob and Mike came to my house and discussed the Super Therm® product. Naturally, I had never heard of it and wanted to do my own research. I found a lot of information about it online and how popular it was in cold climate areas such as Japan and Canada. I really liked the way they were very patient with me. They visited several times as I had a ton of questions and they never tried to pressure sell me. I am never one to make a knee jerk decision and I certainly didn’t then as well. They discussed the savings that could occur from applying Super Therm®. My thought was, yes I would encounter a savings in energy costs, but how long would it take to justify the investment. My logic was that only the money from the energy savings should be factored into the justification. Most businesses in equipment analysis seek a 1-3 year payback. If I applied just the savings to the equation, the payback was much longer. That summation along with not being in a financial position at the time helped convince me to postpone the application.
A few years ago when I had another roof installed, I was able to look inside my cathedral space and I was shocked to see how little blown insulation I had. It barely covered the ceiling sub-floor under the decking. As a matter of fact, I saw several places where I could indeed see the ceiling sub-floor. I knew right then that I needed to apply more insulation. However, when I called several specialists for that service, no one wanted to touch the job because of the difficulties. It would have required drilling holes into my roof every few feet or removing the roof altogether. Everyone said that was going to be very costly. I knew I had to do something to achieve a better effect.
As I saw my cost per kilowatt continue to rise, I decided to obtain a loan and bit the bullet. Remember, we were planning this house for the long run. That’s when I decided to attack the problem from the outside. Applying Super Therm® was actually better than adding any kind of insulation because it works by not allowing heat to penetrate its surface. On the contrary, insulation works once heat or cold have already penetrated an area. Supertherm has the same effect in the winter by not allowing cold to penetrate through what it has been applied onto. Today, my only regret is that I didn’t know about Super Therm® 18 years ago when we purchased the house. I see now that the sooner one can make the investment, the better because of the immediate savings effect. I was also very pleased that the price was basically the same in 2008 as the original quote they gave me in 2005. They were wonderful to work with and they did everything as promised. Baron Rosby actually applied the product and my wife still praises how diligent he was to get everything just right.
As a result, on mild days (73-83 degrees), our air unit seldom needs to kick on. Ceiling fans in every room running 24 hours a day help to keep the house nice and cool. The house now just naturally stays much cooler from cooling down at night and is able to maintain that coolness effect for a much longer period. When temperatures reach 84-93, we noticed that the unit cycles on and off periodically, but that is good because before once the heat of the day comes in around 11:00 each day, our unit used to kick on about that time and run constantly until 9-10 at night non-stop. Now it can cycle off for as long as 45 minutes to an hour.
It is still troubling at times to see our bill rise instead of decrease. However, I understand economics enough to know that inflation touches everything. When we bought our house in 1990, we paid an average of $.06 per kilowatt. Now, we pay $.13 per kilowatt. That is a staggering increase. Admittedly, we can’t do anything to bring the cost of electricity down. So the key is to use fewer kilowatts to save money. I truly feel the Supertherm product will allow us to do just that. We have already started seeing subtle differences in the before and after affect. Over the last year, we have averaged using 2,913 kilowatts per month. Since the Super Therm® was applied, we now average less than 2,200 kilowatts per month. At today’s prices, that is $90 less usage per month.
Another nice factor is that we now can finally keep our thermostat set on 79 degrees, regardless of how hot it gets outside and the unit can maintain that temperature inside the house. Entergy always recommended 78 and when we’d try that in the past, that setting would allow the house to get too hot, then it couldn’t recover and the unit was forced to labor the rest of the day. Back then we’d notice our inside thermometer inch up to 80-84 trying to compensate and we wouldn’t’ get any relief until the sun went down.
A few days ago, my wife actually asked me to check the unit out because she hadn’t heard it cycle on for a long time. (She thought the compressor had frozen again as it had in May, 2008 because it had run out of Freon) Nevertheless, everything was working fine and the unit doesn’t need to run all the time as in the past. She had become so accustomed to the unit running all the time; she actually thought something was wrong when it wasn’t constantly running. Also, my children consistently complain now about how cold it is in the house.
Regardless of all the improvements I’ve made above, it appears the most worthwhile improvement may have been the last and most recent one, that being the application of Super Therm®. I will be the first to admit that I seriously needed all the above improvements, as many of the enhancements were not available for manufactured homes in 1990. Nevertheless, it would have been a much less painful ride since 1990 if I had applied Super Therm® first. I feel it will certainly be the improvement that truly will allow us to live in our house without feeling like a hostage to power companies.
I would certainly recommend Super Therm® to anyone experiencing efficiency issues or even those already pretty well insulated. It is hard to believe that a product sprayed on at the thickness of a business card similar to painting can have the R value equivalency of 6” of insulation, along with the ability to maintain cool roof and exterior surfaces on even the hottest days, but it’s obvious that it works.
Desi Ledbetter
|
